Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

Myth and memory in post-war Europe 183
convenience this need not surprise us. From Spain to Lithuania the transition
from past to present is being recalibrated in the name of a ‘European’
idea which is itself a historical and illusory product, with different meanings
in different places. In the western and central regions of the continent
(including Poland, the Czech Lands, Hungary and Slovenia, but
not their eastern neighbours) the dream of economic unity may or may
not be achieved in due course.
But what will not necessarily follow is anything remotely resembling
continental political homogeneity and supra-national stability – note the
pertinent counter-example of the last years of the Habsburg monarchy,
where economic modernisation, a common market and the free movement
of peoples was accompanied by a steady increase in mutual suspicion
and regional and ethnic particularism. 31 As for eastern Europe, the
‘third’ Europe from Estonia to Bulgaria, the idea of European identity
there is fast becoming the substitute political discourse of an embattled
minority of intellectuals, occupying the space which in other circumstances
would be taken up by liberal and democratic projects, and facing
the same formidable opponents and antipathies which have weakened
such projects on past occasions. At a time when Euro-chat has turned to
the happy topic of disappearing customs barriers and single currencies,
the frontiers of memory remain solidly in place.
31 See David F. Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750–1914 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984).